The Holy Tear of Christ at the Abbey of La-Trinité de Vendôme: Article Summary

The article (in progress) for which this Scalar book serves as a companion discusses the history and development of the cult of the Holy Tear at the Benedictine abbey of La-Trinité in Vendôme, France. Founded in the eleventh century, the abbey quickly grew in stature due to its possession of a precious Christological relic: a tear shed by Christ at the tomb of Lazarus as told in John 11:35. Such a precious relic required an environment that would make tangible the sacred nature and miracle-working power of the tear, by playing on sensory experiences, such as sound, vision, and movement that unfolded within the architectural space of the abbey.

The article traces the staging of this relic by the monks at La-Trinité from the eleventh through fifteenth centuries. The relic was brought to Vendôme from Constantinople by the abbey's founding patron, Geoffrey of Anjou, sometime in the second-half of the eleventh century. Although long destroyed, descriptions from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries tell us that the tear was a crystalized substance encased in three inter-layered glass vials. These vials were kept in a portable altar of German origin dating from the eleventh century.

Starting in the thirteenth century, the monks built a reliquary cabinet to house the relic. The cabinet was placed next to the altar dedicated to the Trinity within the monks' enclosed part of the church. A second staging for pilgrims was located in a more accessible part of the abbey church in the north aisle. Each of these locations presented the relic in different ways that was tailored to its particular audience. Furthermore, in the fourteenth century, the abbey church was rebuilt in a highly refined gothic style that included stained glass and sculpture, which further heightened the aesthetic dynamics of the environment. Over the course of these two centuries, an office for St. Lazarus was developed that survives in the abbey's liturgical manuscripts.

All of these elements, architecture, visual art media, music played together in creating an etherial experience of the relic of the Holy Tear. We invite you to explore in the following pages the evidence from which we can gain an understanding of the dynamic visual and performance culture of a late medieval abbey.

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1media/Splash Holy Tear.jpg2017-06-05T14:11:14+00:00Anne Heath09732d720ba4faf961eef7443cd7fb56ebae6841La-Trinité de Vendôme and the Mulit-Sensory ExperienceAnne Heath10This Scalar book is a companion to a forthcoming article on the medieval cult of the Holy Tear and its performance environment,book_splash2018-02-14T17:33:03+00:00Anne Heath09732d720ba4faf961eef7443cd7fb56ebae6841